The Periodical Üstad – Judeo-Turkish and Ladino – Bound Volume of Issues – Izmir, 1899 – Rare

The Periodical Üstad – Judeo-Turkish and Ladino – Bound Volume of Issues – Izmir, 1899 – Rare
Üstad – "presently appearing every Wednesday", periodical edited by Moïse Fresco. 29 issues. Izmir, February-November 1899. Judeo-Turkish and Ladino (printed in Hebrew characters in Rashi script).
29 issues from the first year of the publication of the periodical Üstad ("The Teacher"), bound together – issues no. 2, 3, 5-8, 10-15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25-29, 31-36, 38.
The periodical was founded in Izmir in 1899 and appeared for approximately two years. Its objective, according to its editor and founder, Moïse Fresco, was " to familiarize the community I belong to, as far as possible, with the official language of the eternal state we belong to" (quoted by Mignon; see below). The periodical aspired to attain two goals: to help the Jews integrate in the Turkish society through the study of their language, and at the same time to strengthen the sense of belonging within the community, by discussing Jewish topics in the Jewish language. As such, articles on current affairs – news from throughout the Ottoman Empire and the world, jokes and anecdotes, were generally written in Judeo-Turkish; while articles on patently Jewish topics – Judaism, festivals and Jewish history – were written in Ladino.
Rare periodical. Only one listing in OCLC – the listing of the NLI. The present issues are available in the NLI collection in photocopy only. The Bibliography of the Hebrew Book and Dov HaKohen state: "We only saw issues from years 1-2. The first [issue] we saw was no. 2, 19th Adar 1899 (issue no. 2 is also the first issue in the present volume).
4 pages per issue. Approx. 53.5 cm. Good-fair condition. Stains. Tears to a few leaves (primarily marginal), slightly affecting text. Tax stamps on some leaves. Front endpaper and first leaf detached. Binding damaged, spine reinforced with tape.
Notes handwritten by Dr. Israel Mehlman on the front endpaper.
See:
• Dov HaKohen, Thesaurus of the Ladino Book: 1490-1960, no. 3471. (Listing 323822 in the Bibliography of the Hebrew Book).
• Avraham Elmaleh, Judeo-Spanish Literature and Press. HaShiloach, Vol. XXVI, January-June 1912. Pp. 253-259.
• Laurent Mignon, Judeo-Turkish, Ch. 22 in: Handbook of Jewish Languages, edited by Lily Kahn and Aaron D. Rubin, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2016. Pp. 634-640.